Hope In A Jacket
by GQSecondAct
Summary: Post "Here Comes The Son." Jess has left and Rory just heard the news. Literati. One-shot.


A/N: Here is the result of some much-appreciated inspiration (Sara) and several hours of boredom. Please let me know how you like it (or don't, hehe). Thanks for reading!

SET POST "HERE COMES THE SON" and/or "THESE ARE STRINGS, PINOCCHIO." Literati.

She hadn't allowed herself to fully absorb it until dinner that night. That he had left.

Breakfast had been silent and uneventful. The school day was something forgotten – seven overlooked hours. The return bus ride had been inconsequential.

Now, standing in the doorway at the diner with the lights humming sporadically and the hushed whispers of diners drifting over her head in jocular annotations, she searched frantically for a smirk of some sort.

Or a thick, tousled, swamp of dark hair. A collection of poems. A carton of cigarettes, half-full, shoved in a back pants pocket. A thick thermal leather jacket...a thick thermal black leather jacket.

She came up with nothing and her eyes darted faster, rescanning each table, each stool. Moths hunting desperately for a golden lukewarm light; they were relentless. But empty all the same.

She shrunk onto a stool, which she decided was a better action for a corner booth. But the corner booths were taken, and not by modern-day insurgents with twisted mouths. She remembered something that he said once and attempted a forlornly blithe smile; she failed.

She cursed herself for not remembering one of the few, rarely spoken things that had ever dared to leave his parted lips at atypical times of the day. She cursed herself for remembering times and days. Not words.

When a hand filled her mug, she knew it was Luke because the fingers grasped the black plastic handle so firmly, squeezing hard enough to drain the color from them. She knew that he had probably coerced himself into saying something, and then had changed his mind at the last minute. She thought he might be cursing himself. Not just for that. She didn't blame him.

This whole damned town should be cursing themselves, she thought. Every last one of them.

On her way out, she let her eyes spin around the room one last time. When they stopped swirling frenetically, each cornflower firefly landed on the coat hook.

Taking in the evidence, she stumbled awkwardly back around and squinted despite her twenty-twenty vision, reevaluating her sanity at the same time. Nevertheless, she did not single out a single lighter or pagemarker.

On instinct, she reached her hands out and grabbed the cold leather roughly. The pilly inside scraped along the chipped metal hook hanging on the stained wooden board. Her fingers clamped the jacket's shoulders inelegantly, and she studied the shape his form had melded into the leather. Every day for two years...it had molded into his shape. It was a part of him, of his frame, of his antagonist for as long as she could remember him.

People began to leave and she side-stepped them in a trance, running her index fingers along the worn collar. The automatic front lights lit up, casting a dusty silhouette across the back of the jacket. There was a burn mark imprinted on the black coolness that had gone unnoticed by her in the past; a small oval.

She wished she had seen it. It was insignificant – no. She wished she had asked him how it had gotten on his coat. Maybe he didn't know. She would like to know if he was aware of this imperfection.

Without thinking much, she slipped it over her shoulders and fitted her arms in the long, chilled sleeves. It fit loosely around her, and she somehow knew that it had more warmth.

It was just waiting for her to ask.

Desiring warmth suddenly, as the moon covered the sky in an indigo stage curtain, she fumbled with the slim rusted zipper. It made a loud noise as she yanked the reluctant smallness up to her neck.

He had just been waiting for her to ask. And she was stupid enough to practice on his jacket after he was gone.

Her raw skin burning as hot, thick tears rolled slowly down her face, she slammed the diner door shut behind her and wrapped her leather-masked arms around her torso, walking against the wind. Sometimes, small bubbles of hiccups and gasps escaped her lips as she sobbed, mostly silently, to herself.

She only realized, when she was nearly home, that there was something in the jacket pocket.

Thinking unstably, she slowly guided her hand with her eyes as she reached into the left pocket and removed a thin rectangular something with furled feathered edges. Initially, she thought 'book,' but it was instead a small notepad, the cardboard cover ripped off.

She slowly flipped through each page, standing underneath the light of a streetlamp outside of the market. All of the yellow lined pages were blank, untouched – except for one.

In small shadowy letters, the black ballpoint ink seething through to the other side of the page and making small occasional gray spots on the cardboard back, Jess had been scribbling something. She squinted again, this time from the hazy gold streaks masking the small blunt capitals like gauze.

"'WE PROMISE ACCORDING TO OUR HOPES, AND PERFORM ACCORDING TO OUR FEARS.' – FRANCOIS DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD."

The surge of memory and a shaky sideeffect of instant delayed understanding caused her to trip over the curb and land on her knees, scraping chalky white on her jeans.

He had promised to be good for her...because he hoped for them.

And now he had left...because he was afraid that his hopes sat too high.

But he promised to be good. For her. Even if he was afraid anyway. He promised.

Above her, two small lineny silver moths found their way to the hazy gold streetlamp lightbulb and droned around it contentedly, humming a monotone tune.

She knew he would be back.

She promised to be good for him...for both of them.

A/N: Please review this! Let me know what you think.


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